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Comment by cooldeal | Hacker News Reader

Equal responsibility but lesser blame. It's like slagging on a poor man for eating unhealthy food on the dollar menu at McDonalds. That man has an excuse, he doesn't have the money to shop for organic food at Whole Foods. Someone already super rich eating the dollar menu just to save a few bucks definitely deserves more blame not for eating healthy.

There isn't much money left over after Apple is done sucking the profit out of the phone industry.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/03/first-apples-rank-in-mobile...

http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Screen-Shot...

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"Sucking the profit" out of an industry is something that happens when you're undercutting everyone on price, driving prices down and reducing overall profits. Apple products arent exactly known for being cheap, so i think it's a stretch to say they're sucking the profit out of the industry; if anything they're conditioning consumers to pay more for a phone than they otherwise would.

They fact they are able to sell a lot of units at those healthy profit margins while competitors struggle to sell cheaper devices at razor thin profit margins (leading to revenue breakdown chart like you linked to) does not lend to them "sucking the profit out of the phone industry", it's them showing everyone else you dont need to peddle cheap crap because customers are happy to pay more for something that doesnt suck.

Since they are doing the most to improve working conditions, perhaps they deserve more profit.

Nokia is known for the best working conditions in their plants in Europe because of the labor laws there. For example look at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqxYiXtzKd0&feature=playe...

However, due to their all their competitors including Apple moving manufacturing to China, they have been forced to close their European plants and move to China as well.

Nokia isn't doing the most to improve working conditions. Apple is.

So someone who stopped beating the wife is more laudable than someone who never did?

To be fair, the correct analogy would be that someone (Apple) who makes a third person (contractors) stop beating the wife is more laudable than someone (Nokia) who never had to do it in the first place.

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